With a stunning first season, The Last Of Us won the hearts of fans and critics with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.9/10 on IMDb to its accord. The success of the show is fueled by the intricate storyline, and outstanding acting by the talents of showrunners, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin.
The two have taken their time and talent to create magic out of the video game, and to do so they work very closely with their team of animation and VFX team including, Simon Jung and Dennis Yoo who have had to put in grueling hours to craft something for Craig Mazin who was unhappy with the Bloater scene in the show.
The Last Of Us and Bloaters
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
The setting of The Last Of Us has Joel(Pedro Pascal) a no-nonsense hefty middle-aged man, tied to the fate of an orphan teenage girl named Ellie(Bella Ramsey). The two trod along the path of a post-apocalyptic world heavily infested with zombies called Cordyceps. Also known as the ‘infected’ they come in many shapes and sizes, with one goal, to multiply. A Bloater the beast-like infected can take out multiple victims at once and, more than spreading the infection, this Brobdingnagian is infamous for toying around with human heads, limbs, and anything in its way.
Read also: The Last of Us Infected Explained – From Clickers to Bloaters Who’s the Most Lethal of Them All?
Craig Mazin, The Bloater Suit, and VFX.
In terms of plot twists, action, and infected, in the 5th episode of the show Endure and Survive, Craig Mazin and Neill Druckmann decided to unveil a Bloater amidst a Horde. To create such a ‘spectacle’ Simon Jung and Dennis Yoo have had to meticulously work in tandem with Mazin’s intricacies to marry the VFX, the props, and the costumes. In an interview with Collider, they share their style of work and pay respects to the prosthetic elements which they used with motion capture to keep things realistic:
“we’re basing everything on motion capture. Even though we might not have captured stuff on set or on a certain shoot, we go recapture and try to get a base of motion, and then we keyframe on top. So, we’re animated on top of that motion capture.”
“He was a prosthetic. He was a guy in a suit originally. And because his dimensions, like his proportions, weren’t quite right, he was a little bit… Even though he was a very tall guy, he still felt a little bit short for those guys. So, we made him a little bit taller.”
In the 5th episode, The Bloater was initially a just man in a costume and did not quite fit the screen making him look ‘shorter’ than the other zombies. Mazin wasn’t happy with this so the two had to incorporate visuals from the game to create the Bloater by blending special effects and motion capture with the costume.
“[…]One of the big things Craig [Mazin] was not happy with about the suit was the way he moved. And it makes sense. You have a guy in a giant rubber suit, he’s going to move funny. And so, one of the things that we did was try to search for that performance, and we did that through motion capture.”
After working closely with Mazin and a lot of trial and error, Yoo, and Jung, found a way to make things work for the Bloater with the help of all the production elements like the stuntman, prosthetics, and technology.
“We had a series of different types of motions based on certain shots and we’d show Craig and he’d handpick which things he liked. And then from there, we could build on top of that. And yeah, it was quite interesting how we’re trying to get him [Bloater] to move[…]”
” […]And so we’d just try to find game footage that way and piece that all together in a way where we can use that as a reference and then animate our own bloater based off of the things that Craig liked with those types of collage type performances that we just cobbled together”
After all the efforts from Mazin, Druckmann, Yoo, and Jung the fans and critics were enthralled by the scene in the episode and it turned out to be a massive success. As of 12th March Last Of Us, Season 1 has concluded, and fans can expect to see a lot more visual treats in Season 2 which is set to begin shooting by the end of 2023 and release by late 2024 or early 2025.
The Last of Us is available to stream on HBO Max.
Source: Collider
